2017-18 team salary

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Ok, I made a quick summary of our salary situation. Bear in mind that Wayne Selden and Kobi Simmons' contracts are very recent and nobody has the details, so I've gone with the consensus from the most relevant NBA salary tracking sites.

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Quick takeaways:

- We're over the cap no matter what. We'd have to renounce all our FAs and all our exceptions just to get a couple millions under the cap plus the room exception, which would be absurd.

- That also means we don't gain anything by renouncing any of our FAs, even if we know there's no chance to re-signing them. So don't expect to know who's leaving or staying until they sign a new contract.

- We have 10 guaranteed contracts, 3 non guaranteed contracts (including JaM's QO) and 3 unsigned rookies. And that's before even trying to re-sign ZBo, TA or VC, or using the MLE. Something's got to give.

- Outside of our own FAs, we can only sign players (including our draft picks) using the MLE, the BAE or minimum contracts. Signing anyone that doesn't fit under those umbrellas would require trades.

- As far as I can tell, Kobi Simmons has only signed as a camp invite, so he could be dumped before the season with no impact on the cap. I would expect Rabb and Brooks to sign minimum contracts and Rade to get all or part of the BAE.

Now, something not so obvious is that we actually have a lot of wiggle room below the tax line, precisely because we can't add any big contracts outside of our own FAs. We have a total of $97.8M currently in the books, including JaM's QO, and that's $21.5M below the tax line. Realistically we can't spend more than $13.3M (2 rookie min contracts + BAE + MLE) in players not named ZBo, TA, VC or JaM. So we are not in risk of hitting the tax unless we go crazy re-signing our own FAs. In fact, we could (not saying we should) do many things without paying tax:

- Match JaM for up to $24.3M (essentially his max salary). This would require not signing anyone else including the rookies.

- Re-sign JaM, ZBo, TA and VC for a combined $24.3M. This would mean not signing the rookies and waving one player (to make roster space). We could squeeze a bit more salary by waving Selden or Simmons (not guaranteed).

- Sign and trade JaM and take in more salary. For instance, if we signed him up to a $19.6M contract we could take in up to $5M more in incoming salary and still be under the tax (not signing anyone else).

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I'll update with Ben McLemore's salary once the dust settles, but something worth mentioning is that it's being reported that he was signed using the taxpayer MLE (more commonly known as the mini-MLE.) The numbers match as the mini-MLE is worth $5.192M and McLemore has signed for 2yr/$10.7M.

The fact is right now, with all the cap holds from our unsigned FAs, we are well above the apron (tax line + $4M = $123M) and could only use the mini-MLE. My assumption was that we would renounce or re-sign our FAs to go back under the apron in order to be able to use the full MLE and the BAE. That's no longer true:

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TAXPAYER MID-LEVEL EXCEPTION -- This exception is available only when a team is above the "Apron" (see question number 20). This determination is made after the exception is used, so a team below the Apron must use this exception rather than the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level exception if doing so takes it above the Apron. It cannot be used by a team that has already used the Bi-Annual, Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level or the Room Mid-Level exception.

...

If a team uses its Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level exception but does not exceed the constraints of the Taxpayer Mid-Level exception (e.g., in 2017-18 they use the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level exception to sign a player for $5.192 million or less) and the team later exceeds the Apron, then the team is considered to have used the Taxpayer Mid-Level exception rather than the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level exception. But the converse is not true -- if a team is above the Apron and spends any of its Taxpayer Mid-Level exception, it cannot drop below the Apron and spend the remaining money as part of its Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level exception. Finally, a team that was above the Apron but did not spend any of its Taxpayer Mid-Level exception has full access to the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level exception if it later drops below the Apron.

Quote

BI-ANNUAL EXCEPTION -- This exception is available only when a team is below the "Apron" (see question number 20). This determination is made after the exception is used, so a team below the Apron cannot use this exception if doing so takes it above the Apron. It cannot be used by a team that has already used its Taxpayer Mid-Level or Room Mid-Level exception.

So if the reporting is correct we can no longer use the BAE or the remainder of the full MLE. We can only resign our own FAs (including JaM) up to their max salaries, sign minimum contracts (will Rade sign for just $810k?) or make trades.

There is a possibility that we have actually renounced some of our FAs but not reported it and we are actually under the apron, in which case we may be preemptively keeping ourselves below the mini-MLE in case we later go over the apron, but this sounds very unlikely to me. I would expect renounced FAs to say some kind of public goodbyes. Still it cannot be completely discounted.

Until this is clarified I will operate under the assumption that we have indeed used the mini-MLE.

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A minor note regarding the cap holds, since I lumped them all together. The exceptions only create cap holds if the team is under the cap. That means technically only the FA cap holds count towards the cap. Of course if we renounced them all we'd go under the cap and the exceptions would kick in, putting us back over the cap, which is why I didn't bother making the distinction, but them's the rules.

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I keep going over the mini-MLE signing of McLemore, since renouncing either ZBo or TA+VC would be enough to put us below the apron. My interpretation of this is we are at least nominally still trying to re-sign all three UFAs.

However, another possibility is that McLemore and the Grizzlies have reached an agreement but will hold off the actual contract signing until other moves are made. This could make sense as it would in principle give us time to deal with our own FAs and get under the apron before signing Ben with part of the full MLE and Rade with the rest of it or the BAE. This is an interesting scenario and very Wallace-ish too (you can say a lot of things about him, but he knows how to play with the available CBA rules.)

- We sign Ben for the mini-MLE using the full MLE. Total salary + holds = $117.1

- We stretch Wright. Total salary + holds = $113.2

- We sign Rade for $3.2M using the rest of the full MLE. Total salary + holds = $116.4 ($2.9M below the tax line)

So we'd still have some money to spend on Rabb and Brooks (we'd have to dump two players for roster space) without hitting the tax, and depending on other moves (e.g. stretch Baldwin and/or Martin) we could have enough room to use the BAE for another player. Or simply save it for next year.

Not being in CW's head I can't say what's the actual situation we're in, but hopefully we're not completely painted into a corner yet.

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There are too many moving pieces to make a forecast, really. We have to wait until someone other than us makes a move in order to narrow our options. In fact, I'm almost hoping that a team will make some outrageous offer to one of our FAs that will allow us to bow out while not disrespecting them. I mean, even ZBo would understand we're not in a financial position to offer him $15M or more if he were to receive such an offer.

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There are too many moving pieces to make a forecast, really. We have to wait until someone other than us makes a move in order to narrow our options. In fact, I'm almost hoping that a team will make some outrageous offer to one of our FAs that will allow us to bow out while not disrespecting them. I mean, even ZBo would understand we're not in a financial position to offer him $15M or more if he were to receive such an offer.

He might get more thab 15. The guy was unreal last year, the problem was that we've seen it so much we underappreciate how good he actually was.

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Note: This doesn't mean that Wright is untradeable. I could see him being moved at or before the trade deadline, if a team has interest. Just not when there are available free agents.

I've heard some teams would be willing to trade expensive vets for waiveable expirings in order to trim salary. Jonas Valuncinus was mentioned. Maybe we could pawn Wright off to someone and they'll simply go ahead and waive him. Wright + Ennis is 9mil in expirings and we'd have to get to 11.5mil to make a trade (for Valuncunus) work. So maybe add Davis and use Brooks or Simmons in a S&T. Not sure if that's legal and all, but it sounds somewhat plausible. The Raps drafted Poetle high last year.

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The thing with Wright is ifwe need to make salary room for JaM and/or ZBo, trading or stretching him are the only realistic ways to achieve it. But of course if we don't need to do that a healthy Wright on an expiring contract is not a bad thing to have.

If we just need roster spots I expect Simmons and Selden (non-guaranteed) to go first, and probably guys like Baldwin and Martin, before we dump Wright.

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The thing with Wright is ifwe need to make salary room for JaM and/or ZBo, trading or stretching him are the only realistic ways to achieve it. But of course if we don't need to do that a healthy Wright on an expiring contract is not a bad thing to have.

If we just need roster spots I expect Simmons and Selden (non-guaranteed) to go first, and probably guys like Baldwin and Martin, before we dump Wright.

This brings up the point for the Summer 2018.

The only expiring contracts are Wright, and options on Martin and Baldwin.

In other words, as it stands right now, next season is going to be an even tougher free agent season.

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fanboyslim, I'm curious to know why you understand the CBA so well. Care to share?

I don't consider myself so much of an expert, it's only that I take the time to validate what I write with Larry Coon's CBA FAQ (http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm). I think I checked once a source in the actual CBA but unless you're a lawyer that's probably something you don't want to do twice. It is a thunderous tome.

There's also some degree of professional influence. I work in support services and I need to read service level agreements back and forth as part of my job, so reading the CBA is not particularly intimidating to me.

Of course after going over the FAQ a few dozen times you start learning some things by heart. Still there are always small details you may forget and need to check (for instance, I didn't remember the exception cap holds only applied when the team is under the cap). That's why I usually start my posts by writing a few lines off the top of my head but after checking and double checking I end up writing multipage text walls full of side notes and disclaimers...

I recommend everyone to read the CBA FAQ at least once and use it as a reference frequently.

As for the salary information, don't rely too much on sport reporters, most are just parroting each other. I usually check the following sources:

http://www.spotrac.com/nba/ - This site is the best structured and it has a lot of information regarding cap holds, owed picks and stuff no other sites keep track of. They also have a timeline of contract signings and waivers that is very helpful to track events. They're usually the quickest to update information too. However they're not too thorough with their calculations, I've spotted several mistakes when they add up salaries.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/ - They're usually very slow updating salary information, but somehow they're the best at explaining contract details, like when non-guaranteed salary becomes guaranteed.

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Updated table with ZBo and VC's cap holds removed. I kept TA's because of the S&T possibility.

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We're already below the tax line (or rather, the apron), which means we can now use the rest of the MLE ($3.21M) and the BAE ($3.29M). At this point I would save the BAE for next season, plenty of money in the MLE to sign Rade.

This also gives us more flexibility in possible trades as we can absorb more incoming salary now.